The sixteen centuries during which the substances had been crushed together, rendered it almost hopeless to unroll, and still less to decipher them; but Camillo Paderni devoted twelve days to the occupation underground, and succeeded in carrying away 337 manuscripts. Almost all are in Greek, very few in Latin, and some of the rolls are forty or fifty feet in length. The lines are arranged in columns across the shortest surface, as in our newspapers, each line extending only about two or three inches in length. The greater part of the works in this collection relate to Epicurean philosophy. Their decipherment has naturally occupied much of the attention of the learned, and many of the manuscripts have been published at Oxford.
The condition of Herculaneum was at the period of its discovery more interesting and much more worthy the notice of the traveller than it is at present. The object of its excavation having unfortunately been confined to the discovery of statues, paintings, and other curiosities, and not carried on with a view to lay open the city, and thus to ascertain the features of its buildings and streets, most of the latter were again filled up with rubbish as soon as they were divested of everything moveable. Even the marble was torn from the temples.
Herculaneum may therefore be said to have been overwhelmed a second time by its modern discoverers; and the appearance it previously presented can now only be ascertained from the accounts of those who beheld it in a more perfect state. The existence of the large towns of Portici and Resina overhead render it impossible for many parts of the excavations to remain open to the sky; one portion, however, was allowed to be so until the sinking of the main road, subject to incessant traffic, compelled the government to have the undercuttings filled in, and the apertures blocked up. A part of the city nearer to the mountain has been thrown open and the sun is again permitted to shine upon gardens and habitations now desolate and mouldering.
From the hard nature of the rock at Herculaneum, the city was for a long time supposed to have been buried in lava, and the darkness and obscurity of the passages prevented the discovery of the truth. But now, since daylight has been admitted, the whole mass is found to be nothing more than hard tufa, rendered, at the lower parts, still more compact by the percolation of water, which in all cases leaves the finest possible sediment. Lava is stone that has been actually melted, and flows over the surface in the same way as molten iron issues from a furnace. The beds of real lava may be easily distinguished in the upper levels of the earth laid open in these excavations. All the timber of the houses has been completely reduced to charcoal, but every beam was found perfect as to shape and in its proper position; many of the bronzes, however, were melted. These effects seem to be the result of an intense heat diffused through the entire mass at a subsequent period; for, at the time of the first eruption, great quantities of boiling water appear to have been mixed with the fine dust and scoria, the same materials that fell dry and loose upon Pompeii.
An entrance from the road at Resina to the excavations was formed in 1750. It is still the only means of access to the most important buildings, and consists of a narrow passage cut through the solid lava. The ancient city lies at a depth of seventy feet below the modern level.
The great difficulty of excavating Herculaneum, on account of the soil above being occupied by crowded habitations, induced the government to turn their attention more particularly to Pompeii.
“Nearly seventeen centuries had rolled away when the City of Pompeii was disinterred from its silent tomb, all vivid with undimmed hues; its walls fresh as if painted yesterday, not a hue faded on the rich mosaic of its floors; in its forum the half-finished columns as left by the workman’s hands; in its gardens the sacrificial tripod; in its halls the chest of treasure; in its baths the strigil; in its theatres the counter of admission; in its saloons the furniture and the lamp; in its triclinia the fragments of the last feast; in its cubicula the perfumes and the rouge of faded beauty; and everywhere the bones and skeletons of those who once moved the springs of that minute, yet gorgeous machine of luxury and of life.
“In the house of Diomed, in the subterranean vaults, twenty skeletons (one of a babe) were discovered in one spot by the door, covered by a fine ashen dust, that had evidently been wafted slowly through the apertures, until it had filled the whole space. There were jewels and coins, candelabra for unavailing light, and wine hardened in the amphoræ for a prolongation of agonised life. The sand, consolidated by damps, had taken the forms of the skeletons as in a cast; and the traveller may yet see the impression of a female neck and bosom of young and round proportions.
“It seems to the inquirer as if the air had been gradually changed into a sulphurous vapour; the inmates of the vaults had rushed to the door to find it closed and blocked up by the scoria without, and, in their attempts to force it, had been suffocated with the atmosphere.
“In the garden was found a skeleton with a key by its bony hand, and near it a bag of coins. This is believed to have been the master of the house, who had probably sought to escape by the garden, and been destroyed either by the vapours or some fragment of stone. Beside some silver vases lay another skeleton, probably of a slave.